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Post-Usenet Pirate wants to know how they can access Usenet
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Not strange at all. Even though it was a success, it wasn't a cash cow and only had limited ability to be milked though micro transactions and other revenue opportunities.
When the axe comes, all that matters is the numbers in the balance sheet. Creativity, enjoyment and artistic value be damned.
I initially thought about installing UBlacklist on Firefox and block the spam, but then I had a thought? Let us do the HouseFresh.com test on Duck Duck Go and see how far up it is?
Apparently, Housefresh.com stands behind world famous Air Purifier reviewers like:
- Best Buy
- popular mechanics
- CBSnews
- NationalGeographic
- PCMagazine
- Rollingstone
- Yahoo
- UsNews
- Forbes
- Choice
- MrGadget.com.au
- CNET
- Amazon
- TopConsumerReviews
- Bustle
- ConsumerReports
- Parents
- Health
- bhg
- thekitchn
- rd
- learnmetrics
- homedepot
- iheartdogs
- telegraph
- msn
- livestrong
- sethlui
- nytimes
- reviewed.usatoday
- popsci
- oransi
- healthline
- seattleweekly
- bestreviews
- thesprucepets
- tomsguide
- gearhungry
- consumertestedreviews
- bobvila
- prevention
- nbcnews
- nypost
- foodandwine
- consumeradvice.in
- news.com.au
- esquire
- gq
- wsj
- verywellhealth
- consumerreports
- moderncastle
- consumeranalysis
- independent.co.uk
- hollywoodreporter
- hgtv
- consumersadvocate
- thehindu
- toptenreviews
- people.com
- popsci
- money
- endadget
- businessinsider
- gearpatrol
- trustedreviews
- digitaltrends
- menshealth
- howtogeek
- techyearlab
- nymag
- livescience
- portugal(what?)
- nj
- iqair
- mashable
- billboard
- prevention
- techhive
- architecturaldigest
- huffpost
- reviewed.usatoday
- realsimple
- techradar
- wired
Well, nevermind guess. I can have either HouseFresh and literally nothing else. Or an ocean of spam, intermixed with the rare human written article that was produced by the main branch of the publisher, rather than its SEO garbage chute.
The web search is a lost cause. No wonder Kagi keeps growing in popularity.
(Also keep in mind, in that giant list? Some of those websites are so GOOD at their Air Purifying review job that they get to be featured more than once, thrice even at times)
Long story short:
- They pledge to keep the status quo. (IE perpetual licenses in new versions)
- Development is going to speed up.
- Subscriptions are 99% coming. (Albeit optional at least at the start)
- Free in schools. (IE training new artists in the Canva ecosystem. So they can be milked later. Here's a personal anecdote: Maya, the paid 3D alternative to Blender is free in schools. Come out of school and it's 235$ a month)
&
- Now throw all those pledges out because words mean nothing. This is not a partnership, this is an acquisition, and unless the contract is provided for us, in writing of the agreed upon terms. Nothing else matters but the actions that we'll see in the near future.
Sigh... Why...? Why is it too hard? Why is it that in this day and age, we can't simply have something we pay for and keep with no worries. Once I started owning software, Affinity was my choice. They had a long track record of not selling out, retaining high standards and a fairly priced transaction.
You pay for good software, the company works hard to make the software better, and then sells you a better version that you can upgrade at your own choice. Plain, simple and honest.
Nothing lasts in this day and age.
You used to be something Serif, but now you're in the big leagues along with Adobe, and against them you're nothing.
Undramatic PS: Affinity Designer is damn solid, like it more than big A's Illustrator, shame I'm now afraid of pressing the update button >:(
EDIT:
Speculative decision thoughts
Apparently in 2022 when V2 came out, they made triple of what they expected and that number was something like 10-20 million pounds. Even though it sounds like a lot, it might have not been enough.
After blowing off some steam to think clearly, there is the chance that Affinity might've been sinking and hoping for a payday. They have always been a couple steps behind Adobe and . Whenever Adobe makes a new feature they brag about it from the mountains as they got the R&D cash to power those, while Affinity is churning along just polishing their software. This makes it hard to sell at a glance, also FOSS alternatives are getting stronger. So their new user aquisition probably hasn't been great.
They might have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they're not free and competing against free software which is just as good if not better. On the other hand while they require payment, Businesses do not mind paying through the nose so long as its "THE BEST" and using alternative NON BEST software introduces unwanted friction.
That 1 billion might've really been the offer they couldn't have refused.
Been a Windows user for a really long time. A few times I tried to switch over to Linux, but it just wasn't doable for a myriad of reasons. Windows 11, I have words with it. Many bad ones, but thankfully there are many users like me that for one reason or another did not switch and put time in to beat the badness out of it via mods.
Windows 12... I'm not so sure if I'll even "upgrade" to it. It really depends on how much Microsoft decides to wire up the OS to their servers. Look, I wouldn't mind at all if I could have "smart" tools with AI assistance, but the problem for me is the lack of choice. Currently, if you don't use their crap software, what mostly travels over the wire is telemetry, and if you go offline no harm done. But make no mistake, useful AI models are too fat to run on most computers. Heck I built mine with AI in mind, but will Microsoft even give me the choice of using my own AIs? (Here's a hint, it starts with N, has a V and ends with an R)
But what if the OS starts requiring it to be online only because of their AI features? Maybe we'll have to start paying for Windows again in subscriptions to pay for the obligatory AI? Or what about scrubbing options away from the settings so you can't "misuse" your own device and have to ask nicely to their AI to do it for you?
There is a road here, and I do not like it. Thank goodness Linux is better than it has ever been.
PS: As for the notepad thing, I'm completely in agreement that it should remain without AI. Such a simple tool for scribbling down notes should be kept lean, simple and fast. Things that Microsoft and their engineers have long forgotten how to do.
Tip for anyone over here who wants to ask GPT-4 questions on the cheap. Applying for access to their API will give you access to both chat GPT 3.5 as well as GPT-4 with a different interface. There you pay what you use, which is insanely cheaper with GPT-3.5, and... mildly affordable with GPT-4 so long as you keep contexts short and conversations brief.
Been making use of their playground for months now, probably paid 20 bucks tops for months of use. Worked for my case.
If I need creativity without intelligence, I'll just use WIzardLM on my 3090.
Do note "Pirating AIs" is not really practical due to the extreme hardware requirements, you'll hardly find someone willing to foot the bill for free.
Peertube as you said is the closest equivalent as a video distributor. Technically a similar approach to Peertube would work by using both Torrents and Instance data storage. Now what makes Tik Tok so popular is its algorithm, which mind you, is a tiny wee bit manipulative. In future, Peer Tube might implement something like dedicated sections for vertical videos. But without a significant cultural shift, I'm not seeing an effective Tik Tok clone appear without a lot of noses being turned up.
Without any ratings for customer satisfaction. I might as well sack the entire support staff, don't bother with AI and I'll get a answered query to F off in 0 minutes and 100% savings.
Absolutely peeved that according to laws: Libraries in a digital format literally cannot exist without being illegal. Archive.org only managed to exist as a Library because they enforced DRM which limited available rentals to the books they "bought" and had copies of.
This is because physical Libraries allow you to borrow their own copies, thus you can even read copyrighted material without asking for permission from the rights holder. So they could argue in court that the DRM only emulated the real thing.
Come COVID and they decide to be nice to people by temporarily stripping the rental bullocks. Their reward for a good deed is a sledgehammer to the stomach.
It matters not, books shall be, and remain forever free (For those that need them). One way or another. All I know is that I'll never buy a book if I'm treated as a criminal.
More interested to see how well it preforms as a base when adding works on top. As one knows, most checkpoints, loras, embeddings and whatnot have stretched the original 1.4/1.5 models to their limits. Finally having a fresh base which preforms nicely as a baseline would be curious to see.
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ArkyonVeil
joined 1 year ago
Not sure, but the blast radius is tremendous, even games from the Atari 2600, a console released nearly fifty fucking years ago have been taken down.